


Submerged

by yaycoffee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Metaphors, Pre-Slash, understanding what has been true for a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 18:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8811898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaycoffee/pseuds/yaycoffee
Summary: The water is rising.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, there is a lot of water imagery in the S4 trailers and promo images. This supershort little thing is what my brain did with that information. This is unbetaed, so apologies for any ridiculous mistakes that my cursory going-over didn't catch.

In his dream, there is the sound of water.  It is a calming sort of sound, like a pond.  John opens his eyes and sits up, alone in bed.  Mary is not here.  There is no sound of a baby.  Should he worry at that?  He doesn’t.  He swings his feet off the side, and they are submerged.  He cannot tell what temperature it is meant to be.  His feet are not cold.  They are not warm either.  They don’t even feel particularly wet, but he can _see_ that they are covered in water to mid-calf.  It reminds him of being a boy, dangling a leg into the water off a fishing pier in summer.

He moves his leg from side to side and watches the ripples that trail behind it.  Slow, steady, even.  When he stands, he sees that the water is deeper than he’d thought.  It goes to at least his knees, and still—he cannot decide (doesn’t even really try to) if he is meant to be unsettled. 

It’s nothing like bathwater—no bubbles.  It isn’t water like the ocean either, too calm.  It doesn’t smell like the Thames.   It just _is_.  The water is just _there_ , and it seems to be rising.  By the time he opens the door to step out into the corridor into the living room, it’s got up to his waist, providing a cradling resistance to his movements.  He could swim, but he chooses to walk.

When he steps into the living room, it's not the one at his and Mary’s flat, but at Baker Street.  The water is higher now, up to his chest, covering his heart.  He really should be panicking, he thinks, but he can’t.  There is nothing to worry about.  He doesn’t float either; his feet feel grounded as he glides further into the room.  His head will go under when he sits in his chair, he knows that--but he does it anyway.  He closes his eyes and mouth instinctively, and as he takes his seat, the water fills his nostrils, but it doesn’t sting; he just feels it as a fact, as the way it is. 

John opens his eyes when he is fully seated, and he is unsurprised to see Sherlock opposite him, sitting cross-legged in the leather chair.  There are tiny bubbles coming off his cheeks, and his hair is floating like one of those elegant sea plants, swaying gently with some sort of current that John now feels against every part of him, like a low heartbeat.  Sherlock nods at him, quirking the smallest of smiles, and John takes a breath, filling his lungs with the water surrounding them.  He doesn’t need the air.  In this space, he knows that he has everything he will ever need.  John nods back.

When he wakes the next morning, the air around him in his bedroom is chilled with winter and dry from the heating.  The corner of his lips has cracked from it.  He walks on cold floorboards to the bathroom where the water from the faucet takes too long to reach the right temperature.


End file.
